


Flesh and Blood

by mylittleredgirl



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode Related, Episode: s05e19 Vegas, F/M, Falling In Love, First Time, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 22:21:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleredgirl/pseuds/mylittleredgirl
Summary: How the "Vegas" John Sheppard gets his groove back.





	Flesh and Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/gifts), [Peanutbutterer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peanutbutterer/gifts).

> In 2012ish, anr came all the way to make me and peanutbutterer finally watch “Vegas” and peanutbutterer demanded that I _fix it._ (I told her I would write a fix-it fic in an hour. This took... significantly longer.) 
> 
> The title comes, of course, from Johnny Cash.

***_  
  
Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood  
and you’re the one I need.  
  
_***

John expected to wake up in hell; instead, he’s in a military hospital.  
  
_What’s the point of dying_, he thinks as he catalogs everything that hurts. The last time he survived injuries that by all rights should have killed him, he ended up in Las Vegas. He’s always been pretty good at making his own damnation here on Earth.  
  
A doctor rattles off his injuries to him: a trio of bullet wounds, a nicked artery, internal hemorrhaging, a punctured lung, kidney damage. Transfusion. Two surgeries. John feels like he’s been broken into a hundred separate pieces and sewn back together, but at least he feels _something._ That’s new.  
  
He asks her, “What day is it?”  
  
“Thursday.”  
  
That doesn’t really mean much to him. There are no windows in here, and he’s seen nothing but concrete since coming to. His sense of time and space—not to mention his place in the universe—have shifted since the last time he got any sleep, what with an alien shootout and staring his own death in the face and strangers telling him that if he weren’t such a fuck-up he’d be _John Sheppard: Intergalactic Hero_.  
  
“When am I getting out of here?”  
  
Her USAF jacket says _Fraiser_ and there are gold oak leaves visible on her epaulets through her thin white lab coat. He hopes she tells him he can leave soon, because even if he’s got nowhere in particular to go, it’s uncomfortable being around these uniforms again.  
  
He wonders what happened to the money.  
  
“You’ll be up and about in a day or two,” Major Fraiser tells him. “There are some people who’d like to speak to you first.”  
  
McKay, probably, or that Woolsey guy who wasn’t really with the FBI. John never did sign that confidentiality agreement. “I’m sure.” And another question, probably one he should have asked earlier: “Where am I?”  
  
He’s expecting she’ll say he’s in Area 51, down the hall from those Wraith fighter ships McKay showed him, but Fraiser says: “Colorado Springs.”  
  
“What... in the Academy hospital?” He can’t believe he was moved two states without being aware of any of it—though, for all he knows, their crazy alien technology let them beam him here like Captain Kirk.  
  
Fraiser’s smile is tight-lipped. “That’s something else they’ll go over with you.”  
  
John feels a belated sense of foreboding, like what he probably _should_ have felt when Woolsey ordered him into an unmarked black SUV. John didn’t have anything to lose then except a bag of recently stolen cash. Technically, he has even less to lose now, but it seems like a shame to waste all Fraiser’s surgical work putting his organs back together.  
  
He doesn’t want to show her how much it worries him that she won’t even tell him where he is, so he tries for a flirty smile. “No hints?”  
  
Fraiser raises an eyebrow and walks away. Apparently whatever charm he has left isn’t worth much.  
  
In this dimension, anyway. Doctor McKay had a wild, unbelievable tale of a John Sheppard in another reality who made good, who saves the universe and maybe has his own _Flash Gordon_ theme song and probably always gets the girl. It’s a nice story, anyway—somewhere, somehow, he got to be the hero he wanted to be when he used to play with G.I. Joes and pretend to save the world for freedom and the American flag.  
  
A nurse checks his IV and adds something that makes John feel heavy and tired. An alarm blares, _incoming_ something, but he’s already asleep and can’t move.  
  
He dreams of being shot, of a woman’s hand holding his, of sinking into a pool of blood and water and becoming someone better than he is.  
  
***  
  
“You’re on the mend,” Fraiser says the next time he wakes up, which might or might not be the next day.  
  
He feels better than he did, but he wouldn’t go so far as to say he feels _good_. He asks again: “When do I get out of here?”  
  
Instead of an answer, she says: “You have a visitor, if you’re up to it.”  
  
There’s no one in his life who’d come to Colorado to see him. For a brief, insane moment, he imagines it could be Lydia, like all these aliens and other dimensions and galactic communication devices can also bring the dead back to life. It’s sad that in the real world, the best visitor he can hope for is a Canadian scientist he met only once.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he tells Fraiser. The doctor is already stepping back from his bedside, leaving the space open for someone else.  
  
It’s not McKay. His guest is a woman, taller than Fraiser and in a business suit instead of an Air Force uniform. “John,” she says, like she knows him, “I’m Doctor Elizabeth Weir.”  
  
A strange chill goes up his spine, like he’s seen a ghost. It’s not because he was just thinking of Lydia, even though her hair and complexion were a similar color—this is something else. He can’t remember ever meeting Elizabeth Weir before, but she _feels_ familiar.  
  
She says, “I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”  
  
“Not as many as you’d think.” He’s racking his memory for how he might know her, but comes up empty. There are plenty of nights over the past six years he doesn’t fully remember, but based on first impressions, he doesn’t think his usual dive bars would be her style.  
  
“Well, I’ll do my best to answer them. I’m told the whole world owes you a thank-you.”  
  
That’s harder to believe than everything else these people have told him. Even thinking about it makes him uncomfortable. “All I did was get _shot_.”  
  
She smirks and, thankfully, lets that topic go. “Are you up for getting out of here, Captain? There are some things you might like to see.”  
  
He feels cold. “Don’t call me that.” The last time anyone called him by rank—except when he curses himself in the mirror—was at his court-martial.  
  
“I’m sorry. John?”  
  
He nods. That’s all he is now—John. He’s not even a detective anymore. Losing that title should be a relief considering how well that career was going, but he feels naked with nothing cushioning his name. Just... John.  
  
It feels like this woman _should_ be able to call him something else.  
  
“Call me Elizabeth, then.” Maybe she’s coming down to his level, or just trying to put him at ease. Either way, it’s a nice gesture.  
  
He wonders what she wants from him. He probably shouldn’t get his hopes up that McKay’s cronies are planning to keep him around, now that their alien serial killer is dead.  
  
Not that he’d accept if they offered. _He_ wouldn’t trust himself with something as important as the fate of the world.  
  
That thought leaves a bad taste in his mouth. At least, he decides, he can take Elizabeth up on a tour.  
  
“Let’s get out of here.”  
  
***  
  
As it turns out, he’s not in some windowless basement of the Academy hospital. They’re in Cheyenne Mountain, under NORAD. Apparently he was transferred here from a civilian hospital in Nevada after emergency surgery because, “You talk in your sleep.”  
  
“No, I don’t.” It’s been a while since he’s had a steady relationship—and to be honest, the instances of one night stands have been fewer and farther between than he’d prefer to admit—but someone would have told him.  
  
“Well,” Elizabeth says diplomatically, “this is the first time you’ve been shot by an alien. That might change some things.”  
  
He wants to see her face, but she’s behind him. The only way Fraiser would let him out of the infirmary was in a wheelchair, and the collateral damage from three shots to the chest keeps him from moving around too much.  
  
There’s not much to see facing forward, just a habitrail of concrete hallways and airmen in BDUs who ignore him completely. They nod to Elizabeth, though, like she’s important.  
  
“This is a military installation,” he observes aloud, “but you and Doctor McKay...”  
  
“There are a lot of civilians involved with the Stargate program. Most of them are scientists. I’m one of the commanders of the Atlantis expedition, so I’m in Pegasus most of the time.”  
  
There’s not much he can say to that—he didn’t even know there _was_ a Pegasus galaxy until he met McKay. “And you’re back in the States—” it’s too strange to say _back on Earth_, “—because of the Wraith?”  
  
“Originally, yes. Now that that’s resolved—thank you again—there’s still a lot of work to do. An alien doesn’t just live on Earth for four months without leaving any trace.” A cover-up. John wonders how many more aliens have come and gone without him ever hearing about it. “Rodney—Doctor McKay—has already been recalled to Atlantis, but he suggested I speak with you before going back.”  
  
“With me?”  
  
She doesn’t answer him, because they enter a room with a giant, spinning stone ring. It explodes into the room with a brilliant blue light that shifts and flows like water. Four men step into it, and when the blue light cuts out a few seconds later, they’re _gone_.  
  
“That,” Elizabeth says, “is the Stargate.”  
  
For a long moment, John can’t say anything at all.  
  
***  
  
Elizabeth wheels him into what could be any ordinary conference room, except for the wall of windows overlooking the now-dark Stargate ring.  
  
“Where did they go?”  
  
“About twelve light-years,” Elizabeth says, “instantaneously. SG-12 is making a routine visit to a planet called Alaris.”  
  
_Alaris_, he repeats in his head. Another _planet_. “I hear it’s nice there this time of year.”  
  
It doesn’t make sense—it _can’t_ make sense—but John suddenly wants to step through the Stargate as badly as he ever wanted to fly. He’s idly wished to get away from the world for years, but this is different. He could actually go _to_ somewhere.  
  
Elizabeth pulls up a chair and sits across from him. Everything looks brighter than it did before he nearly died in the desert, more alive and in sharper focus. She’s pretty—he’s always had a thing for brunettes—but his gaze is drawn away from her face to the mangled skin he can see under the collar of her suit jacket. It looks like she was shot, and from the rough infection scarring all around the bullet wound, she wasn’t near a hospital when it happened.  
  
Elizabeth pulls a PDA out of her pocket. It’s only when she holds it toward him that he realizes it’s not any brand he’s familiar with.  
  
“Take it,” she says.  
  
The screen is off, but as soon as he touches it, it comes to life, flashing lines and dots that don’t mean anything.  
  
When he looks up, she’s smiling. There’s a warmth in her expression that knocks him off-guard, either because his whole world has been upended in the past few days, or because it’s been so long since anyone has looked at him like he matters.  
  
It _hurts_, almost like a gunshot to the chest.  
  
John looks away as she keeps talking. “Rodney said he told you about the Ancient gene.”  
  
“He told me a lot of things.” It was easier, talking to Doctor McKay, getting called out for all the ways he’s turned his life into a bad joke. John probably _should_ have freaked out in the face of secret operations and spaceships and life-sucking aliens reaching into his mind, but being on the defensive made it easier to take in.  
  
Elizabeth’s gaze feels like it’s burning through all of that, and he’s afraid of what will happen if he looks back up.  
  
“That’s an alien device you’re holding,” she tells him. “It’s responding to _you._”  
  
He starts to recognize the lines as the layout of the room they’re in and the nearby corridors they walked through to get here. “Is this-?”  
  
Elizabeth points to the pair of dots in the center of the screen. “That’s me,” she says, “and you.”  
  
“So we’re tagged somehow?” It doesn’t surprise him. They already told him they were tracking his car—for all he knows, the nutters he used to arrest for doing drugs outside the Nellis Air Force Range are right and the government is tracking everyone on the planet.  
  
Elizabeth shakes her head, and when he finally looks up at her, she’s smiling. “We don’t need to be. It’s reading our life signs.”  
  
The dots are pulsing, just slightly. He wonders what that signifies and, like the machine heard him, symbols he doesn’t recognize instantly pop up in the corner of the screen.  
  
Elizabeth looks surprised.  
  
He guesses, “It’s not supposed to do... that?”  
  
“I just didn’t know it could.” She touches his hand to adjust how he’s holding the device so she has a better view of the screen. “This language is ancient. It was last spoken by an alien race ten thousand years ago.”  
  
“And you can read it?” A ten thousand year old language. Spoken by _aliens._ He can barely order Mexican food the way he wants it.  
  
“It’s giving you my heart rate. Around 110 beats a minute, if I’m doing the conversion right.” She smiles at him, and it’s enough to take his breath away. “I should probably calm down.”  
  
His heart’s racing, too.  
  
***  
  
John rests for a few hours back in the infirmary, and then he joins Elizabeth in the cafeteria for dinner.  
  
She tells him about Atlantis. She describes a city bursting up from the ocean, a living city that responds to thoughts and feelings and wishes of a chosen few. “People like you,” she adds.  
  
There’s a lot to keep track of—aliens, alliances, deadly mistakes—but she tells it well. There’s more wonder in her voice than fear, even when she talks about the Wraith, and John wants to be part of that somehow. Her hand brushes the scarred skin at her neck when she mentions the Genii, and he wants to know more.  
  
“Friendly fire,” she says, pursing her lips. “Colonel Sumner—our military commander—was trying to keep a Genii commander from taking me off-world as a hostage.”  
  
John feels a stab of absurd guilt, like he should have been there. He downs a glass of water to try and center himself, because he’s only just met her, and he’s really not space hero material anyway.  
  
“We ended up getting a treaty out of it,” Elizabeth continues. “The Genii have become our strongest allies. It was worth two months and some rather barbaric first aid.”  
  
“All’s well that ends well?”  
  
He can’t take his eyes off her. Her long fingers have drifted away from the scar tissue on her neck to the diamond charm she’s wearing on a thin gold chain. “We take our victories where we can get them, John. Otherwise you go crazy. Loss is the same out there as it is here.”  
  
John swallows hard with a dry throat and wishes he hadn’t already drank all the water in his glass. There’s something _knowing_ in Elizabeth’s voice, something familiar, like she’s reading into things about the last seven years he’s never told a soul.  
  
McKay knew the dates, the dollars, the facts, but she—  
  
It’s not fair for her to spin a magical yarn of the lost city of Atlantis like he could _go_ there. He can feel the unfriendly looks from uniformed airmen all over the cafeteria, and he thinks the rumor mill must be in overdrive. His dishonorable discharge may have been commuted to a lighter sentence for politics’ sake, but there’s always someone on an Air Force base that knows what really happened.  
  
There’s more bitterness in his voice than Elizabeth deserves. “Why are you telling me all this?”  
  
He disobeyed orders, and twelve people died. Four were soldiers. Two were children. When this little holiday into the bizarre is over, he’ll be back in the desert with only a few memorable scars and a wild story no one would believe. No job. No car. No ill-gotten cash.  
  
No new life.  
  
“I met a John Sheppard once before, from a different reality.” Elizabeth has that same look McKay had when he said the other John Sheppard was a soldier and a hero and a better man.  
  
John’s hands ball into fists. “Too bad I’m stuck in this one.”  
  
***  
  
He sleeps fitfully, dreaming of green eyes and brown hair and the way the sky looked when he was dying in the desert. He asks the nurse to bump up his sedatives, hoping the images will fade.  
  
The nurse goes to check with a doctor, and John can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth.  
  
He’s known her for less than a day, and yet it feels cruel that when his wounds heal and they kick him out of this classified base, he’ll never see her again.  
  
***  
  
Fraiser gives him a bottle of oxycodone along with his discharge instructions, so at least he gets something for his trouble. A Colonel named Mitchell brings him the confidentiality papers he first saw in Area 51, and this time, John signs them without a fuss.  
  
Then he’s cut loose. They gave him a clean outfit that mostly fits and return his watch and keys and wallet. All his credit cards are out of place, but everything’s still there—receipts from bars and convenience stores neatly pressed into the billfold along with a number for a girl he never called and a few slot machine tickets he never cashed out. John used to carry his dog tags around in the change pocket of his wallets as a kind of twisted memento, but he lost them with an old wallet years ago. He doesn’t really miss them.  
  
They give him back his shoes, too, with the blood cleaned off. Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of a black bag and a few hundred grand.  
  
There’s no reason to stay in Colorado Springs, but John puts his credit card down at the first cheap motel he sees. Maybe he’ll stay in town until he heals up enough to do some hiking—it’s been a while since he’s walked under real trees that aren’t in the Bellagio.  
  
It’s as good a plan as any.  
  
***  
  
Fraiser’s painkillers makes him feel numb, but that’s not actually what he wants.  
  
John halves the dose, then stops taking them entirely. He’s reduced to sponge-bathing until his surgical wounds heal more, and the coarse scrape of a cheap motel washcloth on his skin feels good. It’s probably a sign he’s even more screwed up than he thought, but John is enjoying the pain of recovering from gunshot wounds more than he has enjoyed anything in a long time.  
  
He air-dries naked on the bed. His senses still feel hyper-alert from his near-death experience, and he tries to pay attention to every drop of water contracting and then disappearing, leaving nothing but his skin behind.  
  
When the loud air conditioner starts to bother him, he drowns it out with a TV pay channel.  
  
John listens more than watches, because lifting his head to see the screen pulls on his sutures and because something seems wrong about busty co-eds gleefully fingering each other when the whole country—the whole _planet_—was almost wiped out by Wraith. John takes in the flashes of skin, breasts, spread legs, and then he closes his eyes and imagines a woman who’s probably in another galaxy by now.  
  
He has no idea what Elizabeth Weir would be like, what she’d say or how she’d feel, but that’s less important than his own rough hands and the surge of lust filling his chest. He takes his time, brushing his stomach, his thighs, letting his erection fill warm and heavy in time with his pulse.  
  
He remembers her hair, her smile, the way she looked at him when he lit up that alien life monitor. John closes his hand around his erection and his gut tenses with _want_. That sharp jolt is enough to remind him of everything that hurts, every bit of flesh the Wraith shot.  
  
He handles himself up and down until he can’t feel his stitches or his bruises or his real life. He squeezes his eyes closed, growing even harder when he shifts his rhythm, and John imagines he took those bullets for _her_.  
  
One of the porn stars on the TV makes a ragged moan, but he has all but forgotten about them. He’s stroking himself faster and faster until he forgets the motel room entirely in the blind heat of how badly he needs _release_. He’s some other John Sheppard, he’s in that fantastical city, he’s in Elizabeth’s bed and she’s next to him, touching herself, making those moans he hears on the TV. He faced down a Wraith for her, he saved her from those aliens who took her hostage, he makes her _beg_ him every night until she’s sweaty and spent and can say nothing but his name, over and over, needy and breathy and telling him _come on, John-_  
  
He’s making noise now in time with the TV, so close to losing himself he can’t breathe, and he jerks his hand and swirls his thumb around the head of his penis, imagining her tongue, her mouth, her body, but something feels _wrong_. He squeezes his hand and tries to feel only pleasure, tries to ignore the chill that rushes down his spine when he pretends he deserves that life, deserves this rush of feeling churning through his body, deserves to be loved by _someone like her_. He slams his eyes closed, jerks himself hard, and comes all over his hand with a force so rough it hurts.  
  
He’s left shaking, his vision blurring from water he can’t blink away. He feels empty as he comes down instead of sated. The porn stars still fucking away on the screen piss him off so much he throws the remote at the wall so hard it breaks into pieces.  
  
He’s _furious_, he wants to scream or explode or break down and cry, and he doesn’t even know why.  
  
***  
  
Elizabeth leaves a message at the motel front desk with her phone number. The motel attendant looks away from Oprah long enough to say she tried to ring it through a few times but there was no answer.  
  
“Was sleeping,” John says, not that anyone cares. After breaking the remote and taking too long to calm down, he reconsidered his earlier position: numb and drowsy on painkillers is the way to go.  
  
It takes him a whole day to call her back. He’s not sure what he’s more worried about—that she’ll already be gone to Atlantis when he calls, or that she’s just reaching out to him to tie up some administrative loose end. A form he forgot to sign, or some detail about the Vegas PD investigation he needs to clarify. There’s no reason, really, for her to be calling just to talk to him.  
  
It doesn’t make sense that she feels this important. He can’t really hope it’s mutual. She travels to other galaxies; he’s a mediocre detective who was assigned to a string of body dumps at the wrong time.  
  
Correction: he _was_ a mediocre detective. Now he’s basically living in a cheap motel with a single set of clothes and a mini-fridge full of discount beer. Sure, he’s _definitely_ got a shot with her.  
  
He shaves before he calls, like it’ll make his voice more presentable.  
  
“You’re still in town,” Elizabeth notes when he identifies himself. That can’t be a surprise to her—they must have tracked his credit card to this motel or she wouldn’t even know how to contact him.  
  
“So are you.” She has far more interesting places she could be, too.  
  
“Well,” she says, in a voice like she’s amused, “since we’re both here and you did save the day, will you let me take you to dinner before you go back to Vegas?”  
  
His heart speeds up. John wants to say _yes_, but it comes out, “Why?”  
  
In a flash he wonders if his motel room is bugged, if she heard him moaning her name when he brought himself off.  
  
“I think we’ll have a lot to talk about. You and I have some things in common.”  
  
That seems doubtful. “Oh.” He glances between the TV and the day-old Domino’s box on the counter. “My calendar’s pretty open these days.”  
  
“Good. I’ll pick you up at seven.”  
  
***  
  
Elizabeth is ten minutes early. She’s in jeans and a casual jacket, driving a sedan with government plates. Looking at her, he’d never guess she usually lives on another planet.  
  
“Nice place you’ve got here.”  
  
“No roaches yet.” John settles into her passenger seat, sliding the seat back.  
  
She doesn’t ask why he’s still in Colorado, which is good, because he still doesn’t know. He glanced at want ads in the paper earlier when he went out to buy some underwear and clean shirts. He doesn’t really think he’ll choose to stay in such an Air Force town, but a snowy winter would be a nice change of pace.  
  
She asks, “Do you like Thai food?”  
  
He’s a meat and potatoes guy, usually, with the exception of an amazing falafel cart in Lebanon that Lydia once showed him, but he answers, “Sure.”  
  
She has a really great smile. “There’s a little place near here I always try to visit when I’m in the area. The Pad See Ew will change your life.”  
  
John laughs. It makes his stitches hurt, but it’s worth it. “I’ll take whatever works.”  
  
It’s a hole in the wall, with cracked linoleum flooring and dirty menus. Elizabeth takes him to the table farthest from the door and says something to the waiter in a foreign language.  
  
So, she speaks Thai as well as alien. Good to know.  
  
She orders a Singha to drink. “You should try it.”  
  
He sticks with Coors but lets her order the food.  
  
“So,” he starts, to fill the silence. “Are you guys watching me?” He’s out of practice with polite it’s-really-not-a-date conversation, but paranoia he’s good at.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
At least she’s honest.  
  
The waiter drops off their beers. John watches the curve of her throat as she swallows her first sip. “You seem to have taken this in stride,” she says. “When they first told me, it blew my mind. I didn’t know whether it was the most amazing thing I could imagine or just the scariest.”  
  
He used up most of his strong emotions earlier in his life. “A lot of weird things happen in Vegas, but this was definitely... something new.”  
  
She smirks. She’s looking right at him. Again, it seems like she knows him, and for some reason he just can’t remember her. “We’re lucky you came around when you did. If you hadn’t figured out where he was headed...”  
  
“Yeah, look, I’d rather not—” He stops himself, because saying aloud that he can’t handle listening to her thank him seems like he’ll be revealing too much about himself. “Can we talk about something else?”  
  
She pulls her jacket off, revealing a red tank top that hugs close to her chest in just the right way. “I’m from Michigan,” she tells him with an indulgent smile. “And you?”  
  
“You already know everything about me.” He wants to run his hands over her shirt, to see if it’s as silky as it looks. He thinks if he touched her, if he tucked that loose curl behind her ear, she’d smile at him like he’s the only man in the room.  
  
He cools his thoughts with a swig of beer. Maybe he’s still got some strong emotions left in him after all.  
  
“This is the biggest secret in human history, John. A little background research goes with the territory.”  
  
“A _little_ background research?” Hell, McKay knew his favorite _gum_, right down to the brand. John’s mother probably never knew him so well.  
  
Elizabeth raises an eyebrow like she might tell him to just quit being difficult. He wouldn’t blame her—he’s probably needed to hear that from someone for a while. “All right,” she says instead, holding her hands open as if to make it clear her intentions are peaceful. “Why don’t you tell me about the _next_ weirdest thing you’ve seen in Las Vegas?”  
  
***  
  
He doesn’t love the Pad See Ew, but once he relaxes, he enjoys the conversation. There are very few things he likes about his life in Vegas, but he’s racked up some good stories and right now, he doesn’t mind telling them.  
  
“Wow.” She shakes her head after the one about the fetish club that specialized in life-threatening injuries—and occasional manslaughter. “Sounds like our _friend_ picked the right place to hide.”  
  
He likes making her smile. “They say if you stay there long enough you’ll see everything.”  
  
She shoots him a teasing look. “Not _everything._”  
  
“I’m sure they’ll build a Lost City casino eventually.” He won three hundred bucks at the Atlantis in Reno when he was first on his way to Vegas. It made him think Nevada would be lucky.  
  
She takes a breath and then pauses for a second, looking him over. “I’d like to find a way to let you see the real one. There are complications, as you know, but I’d like your permission to try.”  
  
_Complications._ All of a sudden, his Thai dinner isn’t sitting well with him.  
  
Complications, like how he’s still a little surprised Elizabeth’s Air Force cronies didn’t just leave him and his classified knowledge to die in the Nevada desert. He might have, in their place.  
  
Seven years ago, he woke up in a field hospital outside Ghazni and a full bird Colonel told him that if anyone had asked his advice, John would still be bleeding out next to the four good airmen who died. John didn’t disagree with him.  
  
“I’m not the man you’re looking for.”  
  
Elizabeth folds her hands on the table and leans forward, so close he thinks he can smell her hair, even above the pervasive clouds of curry steam coming from the restaurant kitchen. “Genetically, Doctor McKay says you are. There’s a lot of technology we’re only beginning to understand. He believes you can make a difference out there.”  
  
John stands up so fast his chair falls over, clattering backward on the floor. She starts, drawing back from him, and it’s hard for him to get the words out: “Trust me, I’m not your guy.”  
  
He can’t be trusted with something like that.  
  
He can’t go back in time and just _erase_ the past to try on another, better life. He’s stuck with everything he’s done, and he can’t let her get his hopes up.  
  
He _can’t_.  
  
They split the bill and walk to her car in silence.  
  
They’re almost to his motel before she speaks again: “I lost someone too.”  
  
Lydia was a long time ago. Sometimes he can’t even remember what her face looked like, or how he felt when she used to say she loved him.  
  
Elizabeth says, “There was an emergency in Atlantis, with a lot of wounded. Simon was our chief surgeon. Things went badly. Four members of the rescue team died, including him.” He hears her swallow. “Inadvertently, I ordered my husband to his death.”  
  
John isn’t good with grief, not his own or anyone else’s. He tries not to sound like a complete jerk when he asks, “What does this have to do with me?”  
  
“When I went through the dimensional rift with Rodney and his team, I met a John Sheppard who was dealing with a loss of his own. He helped me come back to myself. We helped each other, I guess. I’d like to help you, if I can.”  
  
They come to a stop below the flickering _vacancy_ sign and she puts the car in park.  
  
John wants to bury himself in her, wants to turn her words from a strange job offer into something else, but even more than that, he wants to run the hell away from anything that can make him feel this much.  
  
Before he can, she gives him a cell phone. “Think it over.”  
  
John gets out of the car, his heart pounding like she just held a gun to his head instead of offering him support.  
  
He doesn’t look back until her car is already out of view.  
  
***  
  
There’s one contact number in the phone: hers. He goes four hours without sleeping before he calls her.  
  
“This is Weir.” Her voice is rough and tired, but he’s too inside-out to feel guilty for waking her.  
  
“That other John Sheppard... who did he lose?”  
  
He can’t imagine why he feels like he needs to know this, why he really wants to twist the knife deeper and find out if he let Lydia—or someone else—down in _every_ reality.  
  
Elizabeth is quiet for a long moment, but he knows she’s still there.  
  
“He lost me.”  
  
***  
  
Elizabeth is still on Earth, for classified reasons she doesn’t share with him. They drink coffee and then wander the stacks of a downtown bookstore together. She buys _War and Peace_ in the original Russian. He buys it in translation.  
  
He’s falling for her. It’s crazy, it’s a terrible idea, but he can’t stop staring at her while she thumbs through the pages of dense Cyrillic text. They went from the bookstore to a city park down the street, and the sun lets him see a hundred colors in her hair. He can’t imagine that other lucky bastard John Sheppard who had a woman just like her, and he doesn’t _want_ to imagine what her death would have done to him.  
  
She catches him looking. “What page are you on?”  
  
He grins, feeling embarrassed but also just... _okay._ “_‘Well, my prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Bonapartes...’_ It’s a terrible first line.”  
  
“It gets better.”  
  
He’s staring again, and she lets him. Her eyes are incredible, like they’re reaching right into him, past all the bullshit he usually puts in the way. If an Elizabeth wanted him in some other reality, if she’s _here_, maybe he can still do something right in his life.  
  
He doesn’t know where he gets the courage, but he reaches for her hand.  
  
Her grip is strong, constant. She brushes her thumb over his knuckles, and his stomach flips over with something he hasn’t felt in a long time.  
  
She doesn’t let go, and he holds on for dear life.  
  
***  
  
John agrees to go back to Stargate Command for a few hours the next day. He sits in a room full of strange, light-up devices, and a man named Zelenka he remembers from Area 51 keeps telling him to touch stuff and think of things. Alien devices come to life under his hands.  
  
He’s gathering a crowd, too. He meets Doctor Carter, Doctor Jackson, and at least five other people called _Doctor_ who all speak in jargon and look at him like he’s something amazing.  
  
Two weeks ago, he was nobody. Now... well, he’s still nobody, but with some freaky alien genes that let him control things from other planets. It’s a lot to take in.  
  
There’s an armed guard at the door who stands straighter when Elizabeth enters the room. She looks just as good as she did earlier, when she met him at the security checkpoint and he almost thought she was going to greet him with a hug. John puts down the mystery device he’s holding, just in case it’s something that can read his mind.  
  
She smiles at him, then turns to Zelenka. “How’s he doing?”  
  
“It’s incredible,” the foreign man says. “The data we’re gathering is just... look at this.” He hands her a tablet computer, and John can tell from her bemused expression that she doesn’t understand much more than John did when Doctor Carter tried to explain it to him. “If we can get him back to McKay in Atlantis and activate the control chair, we could—”  
  
“One step at a time, Radek.”  
  
“His control over the ATA gene is remarkable. It’s completely instinctive. We haven’t seen anyone else like him.”  
  
It’s starting to feel weird, them talking about him like he’s not even there, so John asks, “Am I done?”  
  
Zelenka looks back and forth between Elizabeth and the equipment in front of him. “Yes, yes, but we’ll need you to come back after we can get the Gateship from Area 51—”  
  
Elizabeth touches Zelenka’s arm. “General O’Neill hasn’t approved that yet.”  
  
“Right. Of course. It’s just... this is important, Elizabeth. He’s special. It could be a real breakthrough.”  
  
John stands up. He doesn’t miss the way the guard tracks his every move. “Can I go now?”  
  
Elizabeth walks him out. In the long elevator ride to the surface, she asks, “How does it feel to be special?”  
  
“Wrong,” he answers before he can think of a better response, one that doesn’t show off his insecurities quite as clearly.  
  
He wonders what the other John Sheppard would say.  
  
***  
  
They go to the last movie showing of the night, the _Transformers_ sequel, and it’s as bad as he expects.  
  
He starts whispering funny comments in her ear to hear her giggle, and midway through the movie, she drops her head to his shoulder.  
  
He loses track of the film entirely as he brings his hand up to play with the ends of her hair. Megan Fox’s breasts save the world, he assumes, but that doesn’t matter as much as this quiet personal contact, the weight of Elizabeth’s head on his shoulder, her hand above his knee.  
  
In her car, after, she kisses him. It’s sweet and gentle and all too brief, and then they’re just looking at each other as people and cars move through the theater parking lot around them.  
  
He admits something: “I don’t really remember how to do this.” He wants her, and he doesn’t want to fuck this up. _Not fucking up_ isn’t a thing he does well.  
  
A sad smile flits across Elizabeth’s face, and she looks away from him toward the marquee above the theater doors. “This is weird for me, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared popcorn at the movies.”  
  
John doesn’t even know how long she’s been a widow. He definitely doesn’t know how to comfort her.  
  
Somewhere, in some other dimension, he knew. That John helped her enough that she’s here trying to fix him, like she’s working out some cosmic debt.  
  
And he’s grateful. It’s weird as hell, but he’s grateful.  
  
He drums his fingers on the gear shift with his left hand, needing some release for all his nervous energy. “That other John Sheppard must have made a pretty strong impression on you.”  
  
She covers his hand with hers. “So have you.”  
  
***  
  
She disappears on him for three days, with only a quick phone call to assure him she’s still in the solar system.  
  
“I’ve got a lot of things in the air,” she says, and while he’s sure that’s true, it also sounds like she’s putting him off.  
  
“Saving the planet?” That’s as close as he gets to talking about her business on an unsecured phone line. That was a figure of speech long before his life diverted into science-fiction.  
  
She surprises him with the truth. “I need a minute, John.”  
  
“Yeah. Okay.” It should be reassuring, actually, that he’s not the only one caught off guard by this unexpected thing between them.  
  
“Friday, we can go hear a jazz set at the Blue Room, if that sounds like fun.” She says it fast, like she thinks he’ll say no.  
  
“Friday.”  
  
Her breathing on the other end of the phone line calms him. He wouldn’t mind if she didn’t say another word, just left the line open as she goes about her day. He hopes she doesn’t leave the galaxy before Friday.  
  
Before she hangs up, she says: “Don’t go anywhere.”  
  
***  
  
He thinks about renting an apartment.  
  
It’s crazy—he has no money beyond credit cards, no income, and nothing here in Colorado that won’t soon disappear into outer space.  
  
He’ll have to find something to do, eventually. His stuff might still be at his place in Vegas, if his landlord hasn’t already evicted him for the rent he’s been putting off. There were a few X-box games he hasn’t played all the way through; other than that, he wouldn’t miss any of it. It would be nice to have the cash, though, for however much his life’s possessions are worth. He’s pretty sure he never took out the extra _shot up by alien_ policy on his auto insurance, so he’s screwed on that front.  
  
He calls up the Colorado Springs PD to ask if they’re hiring, but hangs up before the receptionist can transfer him to someone who can answer him.  
  
He looks up the casino shuttle to Cripple Creek instead. He got shot three times and didn’t die, so maybe his luck has changed.  
  
***  
  
It’s after 3 AM when he gets back to the motel.  
  
The old man on night duty behind the desk asks, “Did you win?”  
  
John looks down at the shuttle map in his hand that must have given away where he came from. “Nah. Just a few bucks.”  
  
“Better that than nothing. Gotta leave while you’re in the black. And never play the penny slots—those are just there for suckers.”  
  
“Good advice,” John says, and then heads on to his room before the guy decides to share any more pearls of wisdom.  
  
He opens a beer and counts the cash in his wallet. He’s actually up almost $500, though he wasn’t about to share that with a desk clerk who probably has the master motel key.  
  
He left in the black, but he doesn’t really feel like a winner.  
  
***  
  
He’s on page 17 of _War and Peace_ when he gets a call from a number that’s not Elizabeth’s.  
  
An hour later he’s under NORAD again, waiting to see General O’Neill.  
  
When the general calls him in, he tells John to close the door but doesn’t invite him to sit down. After a moment’s hesitation, John sits anyway.  
  
“I’d really rather not be talking to you, Sheppard.”  
  
Nothing like opening with honesty. “Likewise, sir.”  
  
O’Neill gives him a look like he’d prefer it if John just didn’t speak, ever. “Richard Woolsey is the civilian director of our R & D operations at Area 51. Against my strong advice, he’s decided to offer you a position as some kind of Ancient gadget tester.”  
  
John shifts in his chair, trying to look more casual than he feels. “You make it sound so tempting.”  
  
“I’m sure Weir has expressed everyone’s gratitude for your help with our recent problem. That’s her department. _My_ responsibilities are the secrecy of the Stargate program and the security of the planet, and I don’t trust you with either.”  
  
John might agree with him, but the general is backing him into a corner and he has to say _something_. “Hey, I found your Wraith, didn’t I?”  
  
O’Neill glares at him. “Should we go through a complete list of your military accomplishments?”  
  
John hates himself for his sweating palms, for the way this is _getting_ to him. Even before the disaster in Afghanistan, he was never the Air Force’s golden boy. O’Neill is hardly the first decorated officer to tell him he’s worthless.  
  
He grits out, “No, sir.”  
  
“You know, I _like_ officers who take a little initiative when they get an order to leave someone behind enemy lines. If you hadn’t done such a piss-poor job of it, we’d be having a very different conversation.” There’s a long pause, and then the general’s glare softens, just a little. “I wouldn’t have authorized McKay to tell you anything about the Stargate program, but... now you know. Maybe you can do something useful.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Dismissed. Woolsey will be calling you.”  
  
John has his hand on the door before O’Neill adds, “One more thing, Sheppard. We have your money.”  
  
John knows it’s a test. If he looks back, if he even blinks, the invitation to join their secret program—if the job offer was real at all—dries up forever.  
  
He could pay off his debts, get a car, _disappear_ down the open road alone without anyone telling him he’s not a good soldier or detective or a good enough man. He could start over.  
  
John’s fingers clench on the door handle. It’s been seven years, goddamn it, but he _still_ wants to serve his country.  
  
He walks out without a word.  
  
***  
  
Woolsey offers him the job.  
  
He’ll be a contractor, working as needed. The money’s fine—not bag-of-non-sequential-bills fine, but he can make it work if he stays out of the casinos, or at least stops losing so damn much.  
  
They’re unraveling technology in Area 51 that makes the iPhone look like a stone tablet and a Blackhawk seem like man’s first crude wheelbarrow. He never pictured himself in a lab instead of the front lines, but his special genetic makeup might help them find what they need to defend the _planet._  
  
If he keeps his nose clean, maybe they’ll even let him inside one of those Wraith darts someday to see if he can figure out how they fly.  
  
He’ll be making a difference.  
  
He can’t stop thinking: _It’s in Nevada._  
  
It’s stupid—the Pegasus galaxy is probably a million light-years away. An extra 800 miles doesn’t make a difference.  
  
Damn it, he let himself _hope._  
  
By evening, when Elizabeth comes to pick him up from the motel, she’s excited about getting him on board and he just wants to drink until he stops thinking.  
  
“Vegas is bad for me,” he admits over a jack and coke. She invited him to a jazz concert, but they ended up in the dingy bar next door instead. “It’s too fucking hot.”  
  
General O’Neill’s words are still ringing in his ears, and this is the closest John can get to telling her that he _knows_ he’ll find some way to blow this opportunity, too. If he’s really lucky, maybe no one else will die this time.  
  
“You’ll be all right,” she tells him. She’s still nursing her first glass of wine, just watching him get wrecked on his own.  
  
He’s too screwed up for her anyway.  
  
He orders another round and thinks at least she’s about to see the real John Sheppard, drunk and messy and not worth her kindness. Better, he supposes, to have all his shit out in the open early.  
  
“John,” she says, instead of letting him go that far, “let me take you home.”  
  
All the way back to the motel, he’s caught somewhere between whiskey and old wounds and _wanting_ her. She’s so beautiful that his heart races just looking at her, and he wants to believe he can give her something—anything—of value.  
  
She parks. The car makes settling sounds as the engine cools and he still hasn’t said good night. He imagines how she’ll vanish to another planet soon, probably without warning, how he’s ruining this thing when she’s done nothing but try to help him, and he says: “Don’t go yet.”  
  
He watches her swallow, her eyes flicking from his hands to his mouth. Her chest rises and falls with a few short breaths before she speaks. “Invite me in, John.”  
  
***  
  
She sweeps a look around his room when they enter, but if she’s disgusted by the way he’s living, it doesn’t show in her face.  
  
“Want a beer?” he asks, suddenly not sure where to put his hands, or if he should offer to take her jacket. Fuck, he’s out of practice.  
  
“Yeah.” She puts her purse on the TV stand—the one place clear of bottles and boxes. “I think I do.”  
  
“It’s cheap,” he warns before popping the cap off and handing her the drink.  
  
She clinks her glass bottle with his.  
  
His mouth dries as he looks at her face. He tries to swallow, tries to calm his arousal before this gets out of hand, but she’s looking at him the exact same way.  
  
He takes her beer bottle back to put it aside, and then he touches the collar of her jacket. He hesitates like he’s frozen, watching to see if he’s allowed, if they’re thinking the same thing... and then she _smiles._  
  
Her jacket slides off easily and then she takes it from his fingers, throwing it over the side chair that’s already covered with his spare clothes. She’s in that silky red top again that he so wanted to touch that first night, but his hands fall on her bare arms first and he can’t bring himself away from her warm skin. He can see just a peek of erect nipples through her shirt, and God if that doesn’t turn him on so fast he groans.  
  
Elizabeth touches her palm to his chest, gently, right over where the Wraith bullet just missed his heart.  
  
She meets him halfway, and he _kisses her_.  
  
He’s kissed a few women in his day, but it’s never felt like this, like Elizabeth is filling in some part of himself he didn’t know was missing. It feels like he _belongs_ here, his hands in her soft hair, thumbs tracing her jaw. Her tongue brushes his, drawing him in deeper.  
  
His hands slide down to her shoulders, to her back and her ribs and her hips, and she’s tracing him the same way, exploring. She feels _good_, better than anything has felt in far too long. Her hand slips under his shirt to touch bare skin at his back, and he pulls her closer, right against him.  
  
Elizabeth breathes out a staggered sigh, like she’s just as relieved as he is that they made it here.  
  
Her hands on his back are driving him crazy, and he needs to find that same sensitive skin on her. Every inch of her is softer than the last, and when he rests his palm in the dip of her lower back she hums something needy that makes his blood race south. He’s hard in his jeans already, and he doesn’t want to rush this, isn’t going to just grind against her like he’s some teenage kid, but he’s been wound up on her since they met.  
  
Her hands brush over a still-raw scar, and he jerks in response. “Don’t stop,” he groans, then kisses her again, head buzzing. She can hurt him all she wants as long as she keeps doing _this_.  
  
Her muscles jump where his knuckles rub her stomach, just under the hem of her shirt, and lust shoots through him so hard he shivers. “God. _Elizabeth_.”  
  
He sucks in a deep breath, trying to clear his head, and wishes he hadn’t been drinking. This experience—this _woman_—deserves better than him half-drunk. He doesn’t want any of this blurred away.  
  
He needs to feel her, all of her, with nothing numb.  
  
She says, “You can take it off.”  
  
He doesn’t have to be told twice. Pulling her shirt over her head breaks their kiss apart, and then he’s gaping at her, dizzy on whiskey and the promise of sex and her, _here_.  
  
She smiles. “Are you all right?”  
  
Christ, _yes._ “Never better.” He doesn’t want it to sound flippant, doesn’t want her to think this is a _thing_ he says, but he can’t concentrate with her breasts in front of him in nothing but a plain gray bra, right _there_, just waiting to be touched. “I’m really good. _Really_—”  
  
She laughs and grabs the bottom of his shirt, then waits for his okay before undressing him.  
  
He nods.  
  
It’s ugly, he knows. His stitches are out, though he’s got internal sutures still dissolving in his vital organs. The latest scars are still bright red and sore, layered over old swaths of cut and burned flesh from his last Afghanistan mission gone wrong. Two of the Wraith’s bullets went clean through him, leaving exit wounds on his back that make it hard to sleep, and the third bullet is somewhere in medical disposal in a surgical bay.  
  
Elizabeth takes it all in with an expression he can’t decipher. She guides him backward until his knees hit the bed and when he sits down, she leans over and kisses each scar.  
  
She started it, so he pulls her bra strap down over her shoulder and kisses the tangled mess of skin where one of her own soldiers shot her in a failed attempt to keep her from harm.  
  
She’s got more, less gnarled than the one on her shoulder but just as violent. Someone _did_ this to her. He’s almost shaking with how much he wishes he could go back in time and take her place, could have been there to protect her with everything he has.  
  
They strip each other naked, mapping each other’s scars. He wants to kiss her senseless, wants to stretch her out underneath him and show her all the wild fantasies he’s been building up about her, but this feels important. He always rushes past this with other women. They either ask too many questions, pry too deeply about something that’s none of their business, or they don’t even care.  
  
His scars are personal, but he wants Elizabeth to see them.  
  
She’s letting him do the same to her, letting him see and feel and learn her history from the evidence left on her body. He runs his finger along a raised line that crosses her entire stomach and wonders how long it took to heal.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” he says, spreading his hands on her ribs.  
  
She’s above him, looking down with those eyes that seem to read right into whatever soul he has, and then he can’t stay still.  
  
Her body curves into his hands like she’s made for him, and he has to keep touching her. Her breasts are perfect, her face, her hips and legs and her _hands_, and when he sucks one breast into his mouth she breathes his name and _yes_ together like it’s all one word. Her fingers trail up the inside of his thigh, making his erection jump with need, and he groans and drags his kiss back up to her mouth and God, he’ll beg her, but she doesn’t make him.  
  
Her hand is soft and hot, her fingers slimmer and nimbler than his, and the feeling of someone else handling him is too good too fast, and he has to stop kissing her to warn: “_Jesus,_ don’t do that, or—”  
  
“Or _what?_”  
  
He rolls her over and she spreads her legs, and for a second, he feels nothing at all but joy. “You’re so hot.”  
  
She laughs. “I’m pretty pleased myself.”  
  
He slips one hand between her legs, watching anticipation rise in her face. When he slips one finger inside her, she rolls her eyes back, and _God_, she _moans_.  
  
He kisses her, rough and full of everything he needs. He’s thinking mostly with his dick by now, urgently pulsing against her thigh, and he pushes a second finger inside her too soon. She tenses, and he stops, pulling back to look at her.  
  
“Gently,” she says, and there’s a whole world in just that word. “Gently. Go slow.”  
  
“Okay.” He smiles, touches her face. It’s going to kill him, just kissing her, just moving one finger inside her as her muscles relax. It’s going to kill him, _slowly_, and he can’t think of any way he’d rather go. “I’ve got you,” he breathes against the soft skin of her face, imagining himself sliding tight inside her with every flutter of her muscles on his hand.  
  
He jerks toward her as her hands brush down his sides. He _wants_ to do slow, wants to feel every quiver in her body as she rises to orgasm, but fuck, when she wraps her hand around his erection and guides him to her, he has no idea how he’ll hold out.  
  
Elizabeth rocks her pelvis back and forth, letting him just _barely_ slip in and out.  
  
“God,” he breathes, need shuddering all the way through him as he fights to breathe. The whole planet could come crashing down around them and there’s no way he’d stop.  
  
“Oh shit,” she says, pulling back so far that he _has_ to stop. “I don’t really carry condoms.”  
  
He smirks, ducking his head, and reaches for the nightstand, because he bought them five days ago when he couldn’t get her out of his head. He thought it was wishful thinking, cursed himself for even pretending the world would give him something this good, but here she is.  
  
“Got to be prepared for anything,” he quips.  
  
“Thank God for that.” Her hand’s between her legs as he messes with the packaging. She’s touching herself with two fingers, then three, and he groans at the sight. Her knees spread farther apart, creating a space. “I’m ready.”  
  
Somehow, _somehow_, he goes slow, settling between her legs, kissing her, letting her lead. She has one of his hands gripped in hers by her head, and he stops moving when she squeezes her fingers. He lets her adjust, and then pushes in farther when she relaxes her grip and smiles up at him. He _waits_, not even half inside her, going out of his mind with _how this feels_, and this slow torture is everything he wants.  
  
Her death grip on his fingers relaxes again and her hips tilt, and then he slides in all the way, filling her until he can’t any more.  
  
_“Fuck,”_ he breathes, _“Elizabeth.”_ Her muscles tense and relax around him, building a rhythm without him even moving, and he desperately wants to move but he also wants to stay right here, as close to her as he can get. He presses his face into the curve of her neck and groans when she runs the fingernails of her free hand down his spine.  
  
She pinches him and he jerks inside her, making her laugh and him shiver.  
  
“You feel good.” She’s looking right into him, like she’s planting the words right in his heart.  
  
He smiles, trying to calm his breathing. _Slow._ He can do this. He touches the tip of his nose to hers. “So do you.”  
  
Then she shifts under him, and he _moves_.  
  
He’s still holding her hand as he rocks them gently, barely moving, sensation washing over him. He’s harder than he can remember, every part of his body straining for _her_, and when she starts to push back against him he groans, sliding in and out, feeling _everything_.  
  
“Oh God,” she’s saying, and every word thrums through him like it’s alive. “_Yes_—”  
  
She’s incredible, he thinks with whatever part of his brain isn’t exploding into pieces. It’s achingly slow, this gentle rhythm, and he usually only likes it fast and hard, but _Christ_, maybe he was just saving slow for _her_. It feels like his heart is moving in and out of her with each thrust, and he doesn’t know how to feel this much.  
  
“God, _John._”  
  
He can barely recognize his name, can only move inside her while she moves and breathes and raises her hips to pull him in even deeper. His arms are trembling with the effort of keeping it together and he lets go of her hand to twist his fingers into the sheets. She’s saying, “Yes, _yes_, that feels good,” babbling in his ear in a choppy voice that’s only driving him faster to the point of no return. He wants to do this _forever_, wants to be tangled up with her getting higher and higher but—  
  
“Please.” His gut tightens on every thrust. “I want to watch you come.” He gasps, pulling himself back from the brink with painful effort, biting down on her shoulder.  
  
Elizabeth hugs him and then wraps her legs around his hips. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She’s rocking with him, and he’s losing his grip on words and English and his body and every fucking thing except _this_. “Come on. I’ve got you, John.”  
  
_God_, he wants her to come first, but he can’t think, can’t do anything except feel, except sink into her as deep as he’ll go. His hips jerk helplessly as he comes, and it feels like he’s turning inside out.  
  
He loses whole minutes to lingering after sensations prickling along his skin. He knows he kisses her, knows he does something with the condom, and then for a minute or two after that he doesn’t even know who he is.  
  
What brings him back is her, shaking.  
  
“Elizabeth?” His throat is dry, with exertion or with the desperate feeling clawing its way up his chest.  
  
“I’m okay,” she says, and that’s when his brain figures out she’s crying. He can see her hand near her throat, fisting her necklace charm.  
  
He has never known how to deal with a woman crying, but something tells him not to break contact. He rubs his hand up and down her bare back, trying to absorb the edges of her grief.  
  
She turns toward him and lays her hand on his ribs. “I’m sorry, John.” Her tears drop silently onto the pillow under her head. “This isn’t fair to you.”  
  
He hopes she doesn’t really think that, or she’s more screwed up than he is. “Hey,” he says. “We’re here together.”  
  
She nods. He brushes her jaw with his hand. His heart is pounding, feeling _more_ than he has in ages.  
  
She jerks in a breath. “I’m so glad it’s you.”  
  
Elizabeth curls into his side, avoiding his raw scars.  
  
He cups his hand on the back of her neck, offering her as much strength as he has. “Are you okay?”  
  
She laughs, at his stupid question or at herself, and touches her forehead to his shoulder. “No.” She presses a shaky kiss to his arm.  
  
He pulls her half on top of him, ignoring the twinge of objection from one of his healing wounds. He presses his face to the top of her head and buries his hand in her hair. “You will be.”  
  
She wraps her arms around him, and he holds her. It’s almost an hour of silence, of breathing and shared warmth and her occasional tear sliding down his neck, and then she relaxes into sleep.  
  
For the first time in a long while, John feels like a good man.  
  
***  
  
For breakfast, they share a pack of saltines and a Snickers he digs out of his most recent 7-11 grocery bag because neither of them want to leave.  
  
He needs this way more than coffee, needs her undressed and messy and beating the hell out of him at chess on her phone.  
  
“I’m usually really good at this,” he tells her.  
  
“Sure you are.” She arches her back, showing off the breasts that are keeping his mind leagues away from chess strategy. It’s not like he’s going to tell her to put her clothes on. The A/C in this place, for all its sound and fury, is pretty lackluster at actually cooling the room down once the Colorado sun comes up. All excuses aside, he’s fine sucking at chess for the rest of his life if she feels like staying naked.  
  
The rest of his life.  
  
He doesn’t want to know how long they have. He considers putting off the question, but if he doesn’t ask it eventually, she’ll just disappear one day and he won’t even have the chance to brace himself. He needs to know. “When do you go back to Atlantis?”  
  
He watches her fingers tighten around her phone, then put it down between them. “Tuesday.”  
  
It’s Saturday now. That’s not even three full days.  
  
“And Monday I’m in D.C. to debrief the President.”  
  
His lover holds meetings with the President.  
  
Two days.  
  
His response is easy: He’s ignored a lot of painful things in his life, and right now, he’s going to ignore this. John moves her phone to the nightstand.  
  
“Are you forfeiting?” she asks, in a voice like she already knows this has nothing to do with chess. He can see the muscles of her bare stomach twitch, and he can’t resist touching them.  
  
She breathes in his ear and he feels like he hears in her breath a thousand impossible promises. Or just one: that he can, somehow, find happiness in the scarred mess of his life.  
  
She brushes her fingers over his ribs, tickling. He grins. “I’m going to make you scream.”  
  
She throws one bare leg over his thighs. “I certainly hope so.”  
  
She doesn’t scream. He takes his time, kissing her, learning every inch of her skin, spreading her over the bed. He eats her out until she can’t speak, and when she comes, it’s with a choppy sigh that shakes all through her body, that makes her muscles tighten so hard on his tongue that he almost comes himself just _imagining_, and he keeps going, keeps kissing her between her legs until she’s all the way back down.  
  
_God_, he has got to feel that for himself, _inside_ her the next time. For now, he tries to cool his breathing, tries to keep back the urge to fuck her now before she’s ready, but she smells so wet and perfect—  
  
He wants to make her come like that someday _saying his name_, and just the thought makes him groan. He’s touching himself before he realizes it, but it’s only for a moment before she replaces his hand with hers. She slides along his body, every point of contact making him tremble.  
  
“You don’t—” he starts to say, because this was about her, because he wanted to, not because he expects the same in return, and then she raises an eyebrow at him like he’s being crazy as she blows cool air over his straining erection, and then her mouth is on him and _God. Damn_.  
  
He can’t say a single word.  
  
***  
  
Elizabeth has to go back to the base to report in, and while she’s gone, John checks out and finds a nicer hotel. He leaves the cheap beer and the casino shuttle information in his old motel room, like maybe he’s changed.  
  
“You didn’t have to do this,” Elizabeth says. “I’m not here for the accommodations.”  
  
John points the tip of his knife at her dinner, in the hotel restaurant. “Steak’s better than crackers from a vending machine, though, right?”  
  
Her eyes roll back into a blissful expression. “You have no idea how long I’ve been craving this.”  
  
“You’ve been back for a while now—you haven’t been able to sneak away for a steak?”  
  
She shrugs. “It’s hard to remember to take care of myself. Maybe you can relate.”  
  
He usually treats himself like shit, that’s true, but her reasons are probably less selfish. She’s got a whole expedition full of people to care for. John hasn’t let anyone close enough in years.  
  
Except her. He doesn’t think it’s just that he’s rebounding from a near-death experience or that he’s suddenly able to get his hands around his demons. It’s Elizabeth.  
  
She’s something special. From what she told him, there’s at least one other John Sheppard out there who agrees with him. He wonders, if he’d met her sooner, if he were somehow out there with her... maybe he’d be more of a hero after all.  
  
“I’ve been thinking about alternate realities,” he says.  
  
She glances around them to make sure they’re still alone, though really, if John overheard this conversation in a restaurant, he’d never assume they were being serious. “Theoretical or specific?”  
  
“Theoretical, I guess.”  
  
She swirls the wine in her glass. “We’ve only encountered the one, but from what Rodney tells me, the permutations are endless. It’s a romantic idea: somewhere, you’re living out all the roads not taken.”  
  
Elizabeth’s husband could have survived. Lydia could be alive—maybe they’d even still be together. John could have died with the others when his chopper crashed behind the lines in Afghanistan. The Wraith could have destroyed the world.  
  
He could be going back to Atlantis with her on Tuesday, or he might not know her at all.  
  
There’s no way she can know the answer, but he asks: “How often do you think we meet?”  
  
In Las Vegas. In Colorado. In another galaxy. John can’t imagine a version of events where he meets her and it doesn’t profoundly change him.  
  
Elizabeth reaches across the table for his hand. “Often, I hope.”  
  
***  
  
She wants to see the hotel’s rooftop garden, so they go there after dinner.  
  
Twenty stories didn’t used to be high enough to even give him a buzz of excitement, compared to altitudes where he used to fly, but it’s been a long time since he’s left solid ground without the harsh glare of neon lights all around him.  
  
It’s her, too, holding his hand in the elevator, standing right at the railing as she takes in the sea of city lights and black mountains beyond. It almost feels like he’s in the cockpit, moments from taking off.  
  
“It’s strange not hearing the ocean,” she says.  
  
He’s keeping his hand on her hip, like he’s protecting her from falling over the well-railed edge. “You miss it, when you’re here.”  
  
She glances back at him with a sad smile. “I wish you could see it.”  
  
“It’s hard to imagine that much water.” A whole planet, she said, except for a single continent of lush, forested land. “I’ve been in the desert for a long time.” He brushes his thumb over the bare skin at her waist. For however good he feels now, all the bleak temptations of his life are camped just outside, waiting to sweep him under again.  
  
She steps back against his chest and he draws his arms around her. The cityscape is pretty, but it can’t hold his attention away when her neck is right there, just under her hair, waiting to be kissed.  
  
“John,” she breathes when he kisses her. There’s something compelling in the way she says his name, like it really matters that he’s the one here with her right now, that he’s _him_. She relaxes her head back on his shoulder and lets him hold the weight.  
  
She doesn’t say anything else, but he fills her silence in his head with everything he’s needed to hear from someone just like her in all the years he’s been alone.  
  
_I love you_ swells in his throat. It’s been only days, though, and she’s leaving on Monday. It’s too soon for him to feel like she’s holding the other half of his heart in her hands and she’s going to take it away with her when she goes.  
  
He supposes he’s never done anything the way most people do.  
  
“Is there anything you want to do tomorrow before you go back?” He rubs his hands up and down her arms against the night breeze. Thinking that she’s almost gone makes it hard to stand still.  
  
She catches one of his hands and brings it to her mouth. He can feel her soft smile. “Just be with you.”  
  
Earth stretches out below them, and there’s nothing she wants in it more than _him_ for as long as she’s here. He kisses her ear, and then whispers, “I think that can be arranged.”  
  
***  
  
This mattress is better, the sheets softer, and the bed doesn’t squeak. John doesn’t care—she can ride him like this on hard gravel if she wants to and it’ll still be the best feeling in his life.  
  
“You,” he chokes out, in between moans and gasps and the feel of her breasts fitting perfectly in his hands, “you’re amazing.”  
  
She’s moving at his speed this time, fast, and it feels so much _better_ than it ever has that it’s blowing his mind. He’s been on the edge for so long he’s seeing stars, and he’s desperate to hang on because God, she’s just as close. Her muscles are iron when she wants them to be, compressing him, and he’s helpless underneath her. She could take anything she wants from him, _do_ anything she wants to him, and if it feels anything like this, he’s hers.  
  
Elizabeth leans forward, changing the angle, and he pushes into her as hard as he can when he’s flat on his back. His balls are tight and quivering, and the only thing holding him here is _her_ and the promise of how it’ll feel when she comes all around him.  
  
Her mouth is slack, but she manages to form words: “Kiss me.”  
  
He’ll do more than that. John pushes into her again, grabs her shoulders, and flips her over into the bed before kissing her with all the need he feels. _Come on,_ he thinks, because he has no breath to spare for speaking aloud when he’s kissing and thrusting faster and faster in time with the shivers rolling across her muscles. _Come on, Elizabeth, come on-_  
  
He can’t hold his rhythm and she can’t hold hers, and then, thank God, she _comes,_ and she drags him right along with her.  
  
It’s a few minutes before he can speak at all, and then all he can get out is, “Holy shit.” His nerves are still tingling all over.  
  
Elizabeth laughs against his cheek. “I couldn’t say it better.”  
  
He presses his forearms to the bed around her to take some of his weight. He doesn’t want to move off her completely just yet. He rests his chin on her chest. “Did you pick up some new tricks in another galaxy?”  
  
She giggles and wrinkles up her nose. It’s adorable, and he’d kiss her, but he’s still languishing in afterglow too much to move even that far. “I prefer men from Earth.”  
  
“No complaints here.”  
  
“I should hope not.” She brings her hand up to thread through his hair, sending a whole new cascade of shivers through his body.  
  
He rolls to his side so he can relax and just enjoy her, the way she smells, her fingers in his hair, the dip of the mattress from another body in bed with his.  
  
He doesn’t want to think of his bed, of the Vegas apartment that hasn’t felt like home for seven straight years. He could get a better place, he thinks before he can stop himself. Closer to his new job. He could handle the desert and the casinos and the O’Neills who think he’ll never amount to anything if he just had her there to share his pot of coffee every morning.  
  
“Come with me.”  
  
He’s an asshole to even ask—this is her career, her _life._ He can’t compete with another galaxy. He doesn’t think any man could.  
  
He already knows she’s going to say no, knew before he even asked the question, but God bless her, she _hesitates_.  
  
Then, of course: “I can’t.”  
  
It still stings, not with rejection but with inevitability. She was always leaving. “I know.”  
  
“Don’t give up.” She moves her hand to his chest. “Think of it like a probationary period. Rodney will still want you in the city. The Generals will come around.”  
  
There are twelve names in his file that say they never will. “I doubt it.”  
  
“Hey.” She grabs his chin in her hand and waits until he looks at her. “I’m not going to forget about you.”  
  
He believes her, and the intensity of that makes it hard to breathe.  
  
It might be easier if she forgot him, if she left him now before he falls in any deeper, but he’s been living in a dry and lonely hell for far too long now, and she _matters_ to him. He doesn’t see how it can, but he wants this to work. It can’t be any crazier than aliens, can it?  
  
Her fingers are tracing patterns on his chest, too deliberate to be random but nothing he recognizes. “What language is that?”  
  
She smiles. “It’s my address.”  
  
He closes his eyes and pictures the Stargate, spinning. He tries to imagine what it would feel like to step through, to be blown apart into pieces and emerge somewhere a galaxy away.  
  
He wonders if it feels like being reborn.  
  
***  
  
They run a few errands in the morning, mostly to buy things she wants to bring back for her team that Stargate Command might not deem essential mission supplies. He helps her pick out movies and video games and laughs when she cleans out all the gum and candy in the checkout line.  
  
“A piece of home,” Elizabeth explains as they walk back to the car, though it’s not necessary. Afghanistan is next door compared to the Pegasus galaxy, but John remembers the feeling. “We were out of contact almost the whole first year we were there. Don’t tell anyone, but I may have shed a tear over the last box of Milk Duds.”  
  
“Doctor Weir, the returning hero,” he teases, “bringing gifts of Snickers and Airheads to the starving masses.”  
  
She elbows him, grinning.  
  
He asks it as they’re arranging bags in the trunk of her car. “What do you miss most about...?” He waves a hand, trying to encompass all of Earth.  
  
A handful of expressions chase themselves across her face as she considers it. “I’m not sure. I don’t have a lot of time to think about it. Maybe that’s a blessing.”  
  
He points to the bags of candy. “These will melt in the car.”  
  
It’s true, which means it’s not just an excuse to get her back to the hotel. He’s enjoying being out with her, joking around about movies neither of them have ever seen and hunting for the elusive _best coffee shop in the city_ the hotel clerk mentioned, but he’d enjoy being alone with her even more. In bed, preferably.  
  
They do actually find the coffee shop on their way back. She spends ten minutes staring at all the trendy new drinks before ordering a simple espresso.  
  
“I think this is what I miss most,” she says, sipping her drink in a corner booth.  
  
“Coffee?” He amends: “_Good_ coffee?”  
  
Elizabeth shakes her head. “This,” she says, lifting her cup, “is the most important decision I’ve made today.”  
  
It’s a new way of looking at it. He’s hated feeling useless all these years, but he can see the appeal when she’s had a galaxy riding on her shoulders. “Well, I’m an expert at wasting time on unimportant things.”  
  
She settles back in her chair and smirks at him. “All right, then, Grand Master. What’s next?”  
  
He has a few suggestions.  
  
***  
  
John isn’t sure if _War and Peace_ is getting good yet or not, but it’s definitely getting heavy, so he puts it aside. Elizabeth’s still reading hers, occasionally reaching over to borrow his translated edition for a passage or two.  
  
He’s not going to complain about book theft when she’s wearing nothing but his shirt. If he owned anything of value, she could rob him blind.  
  
John lays his hand over her ribs and lets himself drift in and out to her heartbeat and turning pages. He’s tired—from sex, from his still-healing injuries, from all the years he never slept as well as this—but he tries to stay awake. Their time is limited, and even if they’re not doing anything except reading, he’d rather be aware of as much of it as he can.  
  
His split-second dreams are all about her and a city he’s never seen.  
  
Then he must have drifted off for longer, because when he next opens his eyes, the light from the window is waning and she’s lying next to him. Her eyes are open, like she’s been watching him sleep.  
  
He clears his throat. “How long was I out?”  
  
She lays her palm on his cheek. “Not long.”  
  
“You could’ve woke me.” He turns his head to kiss her wrist.  
  
She rolls her eyes and snuggles closer. “I think we both deserve a little rest.”  
  
He can’t keep a smug grin from his face. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Do you want to go downstairs for dinner?” _Gotta refuel,_ he thinks, already imagining how they’ll burn off that energy afterwards.  
  
“Yes, but—” Elizabeth sits up and fusses with her hair for a moment. “I need to be back at the SGC tomorrow by 0500.”  
  
He nods. His hands feel cold, and he crosses them over his chest. “So I should let you sleep tonight?”  
  
“Believe me, _any_ sleep is more than what I’m used to.”  
  
His brain calculates the time they have left, down to the minute. He’s never been able to leave a math problem unsolved, even when he’d rather not know the answer. “Will I see you again?” It’s too much to leave that question hanging out there open-ended, in case she says no, so he specifies, “Before you go back?”  
  
She looks down at her hands. “I don’t know. There’s a lot... I’ve let some things slip. I need to make sure everything’s ready.”  
  
John sits up. It’s too much to face lying down. She’s right, of course, her people have to come first. He’s always had a hard time separating his personal feelings from duty—it’s a deadly trait he’d never wish on anyone else.  
  
“Maybe an hour, time for coffee after I get back from Washington...”  
  
“I’ll take it.”  
  
She takes his hand and squeezes it. “When are you going back to Vegas?”  
  
He told Woolsey he could start next Monday. He should probably find a car first, and if he’s been evicted from his apartment, he’ll have to find somewhere new to live. “After coffee, I guess.”  
  
She kisses him. There’s an urgency in her mouth, in her arms when they wind around his shoulders. Her whole body is tense. He’s still mentally ticking away the minutes, thinking how in two days she’ll be so far away it’ll be like she never existed, and he reconsiders their dinner plans.  
  
He breaks the kiss long enough to suggest, “Room service?”  
  
She hums approval. “_Later._”  
  
***  
  
She gets some sleep that night. John doesn’t.  
  
He straightens the covers over her and tidies up their room service trays. The hotel left the _Colorado Springs Gazette_ when they changed out the sheets, and John reads through the used car classifieds. He memorizes the way she looks when she’s asleep, expression relaxed in a dreamy smile, fingers curled around the edge of the pillow.  
  
He loves her. Even though she’s leaving, even though 0500 might be the last time he ever sees her, the emotion surging thick in his chest feels good more than it hurts.  
  
He’s been wasting time for seven years, losing at poker, losing at police investigation, losing at life. He always felt like he was just killing time, waiting for something.  
  
He thought he was waiting for death, honestly.  
  
But this—McKay, Woolsey, the Stargate, _Elizabeth_...  
  
In retrospect, he thinks he was waiting for them.  
  
***  
  
He wakes her before 4 a.m. and helps her wash her hair.  
  
She comes around two of his fingers, hot water pouring over them and his name on her lips.  
  
He holds her until she gets her legs back under her.  
  
“I’m going to miss this,” she says, leaning back against him.  
  
He sucks water from her neck where it meets her jaw and then gently bites her ear. “More than Milk Duds?”  
  
“More than a lot of things.”  
  
He trails his hands down over her stomach and pushes her against the tile wall.  
  
They’ve got time.  
  
***  
  
She goes to Washington.  
  
He buys a car.  
  
It could use a hell of a lot of work and looks beat—for $800, he can’t expect anything otherwise—but it’s a Cadillac and it’ll get him to Nevada and it’s an old enough model that he can upgrade most of it himself. It’ll give him a project. He might be better at staying off the strip if he has something else to do.  
  
He has to fight to get the top down and isn’t sure he’ll ever get it back up, but it’s worth it to feel the wind when he drives.  
  
She calls when he’s in an auto parts store, looking at wrench sets.  
  
“The President sends his regards.”  
  
“Really?” He assumes she’s joking, but as weird as it is, he _did_ help save the planet.  
  
“He hopes you’re recovering well. I told him you seemed to be getting your strength back.”  
  
John laughs. For a minute, he lets himself pretend it’ll always be like this and she’ll be no farther away than his cell phone can reach. He could live with that. He has a thing for phone sex, and to be honest, it’s always been easier to talk about _feelings_ with a woman if he can’t see her reaction.  
  
He’d get over that with Elizabeth, he thinks. She’s already bringing something out in him, something good and strong he thought he lost in Afghanistan, and he wants to know where this will take him. What he’ll become.  
  
Not that it matters. She’s in a rush and can’t say any more about her meetings on an unsecured line, so he lets her go. Tomorrow, he’ll let her go all the way to Atlantis.  
  
His habits feel like they’re under his skin, the slide of cards in his hand, the sick pleasure of a fistfight in a dark bar, a stiff drink drowning out the thoughts in his head.  
  
He buys the wrenches, gets in his car, and drives like he can leave himself behind. The Cripple Creek casinos are west of Colorado Springs, and John drives north, all the way to Boulder before it feels safe to turn around.  
  
***  
  
Coffee is a waste of her last free hour on Earth, but it’s what they have. They’re too far from the hotel to get her back in time, and while John might have briefly considered the Starbucks bathroom as an alternate venue, he eventually decided against it.  
  
He’s not desperate for sex, he’s desperate for _her_, for something that can hold him on this course while she’s out of reach.  
  
So, coffee. Holding her hand. _Talking_. That has never been one of his strengths, which is probably why they’ve been circling around in small talk since they sat down.  
  
“Did you put in a good word for me with Woolsey?”  
  
“Well, we mostly talked business while we were in D.C.,” Elizabeth says, “but he’s looking forward to have you on board. He thinks you can help them solve a lot of problems.”  
  
John smirks. That’ll be an interesting change. “I usually _create_ the problems.”  
  
“Don’t say that. You’re too hard on yourself.”  
  
He’s going to try and remember her faith in him. Maybe it will help.  
  
He doesn’t really care about Woolsey or his new job right now anyway. John has no experience with this. In the past, before deployments, _he_ was always the one leaving.  
  
He pinches a sugar packet between his fingers, trying to compress the granules together into one corner while he figures out how the hell to say goodbye. “Elizabeth,” he finally starts. “Where does this leave us?”  
  
Her breathing sounds loud among the bustle of other people around them. They all disappear at the edges of his senses until it feels like she’s the only person in the world.  
  
Elizabeth folds her hands in front of her. “It’s been, what, a week? I’m not going to ask for your fidelity.”  
  
_Ask,_ he wants to say. Hell, people can get married in Vegas faster than this.  
  
“Besides,” she continues, clearing her throat, “it’s probably harder to be out there, in danger, if you know someone’s waiting for you.”  
  
He drops the sugar packet on the table and then covers her hands with his. He’s reaching for words that can explain how he feels, but all he comes up with is, “Too bad.”  
  
Elizabeth swallows, then nods.  
  
When he hugs her goodbye, he prays it’s not the last time.  
  
***  
  
He’s just over the border into Utah when she calls.  
  
“I’m leaving. Ten minutes. I wanted—” she sighs, and something aches in him at the sound. “It’s silly to call when we already said goodbye, but I wanted to.”  
  
He pulls over on the shoulder of the freeway. His cell reception’s been going in and out, and he doesn’t want to risk losing her.  
  
“Hey, you gave me the phone,” he reminds as cars whiz past him. He puts on his hazards. “You can call me whenever you want.”  
  
It feels overwhelming when he pictures her in the middle of the SGC, stepping away from the chaos around the Stargate to talk to him moments before traveling to another galaxy. She must have other things to do. People expecting her to be somewhere else, dealing with more pressing things.  
  
“Take _care_ of yourself,” she says, like she knows how hard it will be.  
  
His heart’s pounding and he can barely breathe. A truck rolls past, rattling his car, and he tightens his hand around the phone so he doesn’t drop it. It feels like he’s ripping the words from his chest. “I love you.”  
  
He wishes she were here. It’s terrifying, but he wants to see her face.  
  
He can imagine it, though, when she says: “Oh, thank God.”  
  
He laughs, and he can’t stop, like it’s seven years of pent-up emotion bursting at the seams. She’s laughing too, on the other end of the line, though she probably has no idea why.  
  
“Call me when you’re back in the country,” John tells her, when he can speak. There are other things he wants to say, promises he could make or threats to her military officers that they do a better job keeping her safe from harm, but he goes with, “Be safe.”  
  
She promises, “I’ll be careful,” and that’s really all that matters.  
  
***  
  
He waits until dark to finish his drive back to the desert, because the AC in his new ride broke around noon and dying of heatstroke isn’t the welcome home he’s hoping for. The first priority for his car repair project is clear.  
  
Most of the sprawling residential areas of Las Vegas are dark by the time he gets there, but the strip is always bright, pouring light pollution into the sky above.  
  
It’s different this time, arriving in Vegas. He lost everything he had in Afghanistan—his purpose, his career, Lydia. Vegas was the end of the road, purgatory with showgirls. Now...  
  
He’s part of something again.  
  
There are eviction notices on his apartment door, but his key still works and all his stuff is still inside. He almost hoped there’d be nothing to come back to so he could start fresh without even trying, but maybe, in the long run, it’s better for him to have to deal with it.  
  
It’s his life, after all. He should probably figure out how to live on his own planet before he tries to move to another one.  
  
It’s hotter outside than in, but he opens the windows to air the place out from whiskey and beer and being too long sealed up. He can hear the expressway from here when it’s not drowned out by the AC, and it makes him think of Elizabeth, out there with the ocean all around her.  
  
When he cleans up the bottles, he throws out the full ones along with the empties. He’ll miss it out of habit, probably miss it too much, but not because it ever gave him real peace.  
  
Elizabeth did, and he thinks that will make this easier.  
  
***  
  
He dreams about the Stargate.  
  
It’s a year from now, maybe two. He’s worked hard, saved the world again, and there’s General O’Neill at his back telling him, _Nice work, Sheppard. Good luck._  
  
The stone ring spins, locking on to each symbol Elizabeth once drew on his chest in a hotel bed, the address she left for him to follow.  
  
It bursts to life, just as wondrous as it was the day he met her. She’s on the other side, ready to welcome him to a city he’s never seen.  
  
John steps through the event horizon and finally, he’s home.  
  
***  
  
He wakes up in Las Vegas, skin still prickling from an imaginary wormhole.  
  
He takes a minute to get his bearings, and then he calls Woolsey.  
  
It’s a few days early, and he’ll have to drive there with an icepack on his neck to keep from overheating in 110 degrees and a car without AC, but, “I’m ready to start.”  
  
He had to come back to know for sure: Vegas isn’t his city.  
  
For now, maybe, but...  
  
There’s somewhere else he belongs.  
  
*end*


End file.
